Open Discussion: How Do You Improve Players Without Coming out as an Arrogant Jerk?

The above picture is quite fitting. The shot is of one bear standing atop of a log looking down at another bear. It’s almost as if the tall bear is trying to tell the other bear that his technique of catching fish is incorrect. I suspect that both bears engage in a bear-like scrap which involves tussling the opponent around until they both run out of breath and call it a draw.

This leads me to today’s open discussion post. I’m going to describe to you a completely and entirely hypothetical situation.

Seriously.

Let’s assume for the moment that I’ve lost several healers over the course of two weeks. The fact that it really did happen has no bearing at all whatsoever on his hypothetical scenario.

We take on 3 extra healers, all considerably green in terms of experience and gear. They’ve done Black Temple and Hyjal a combined 5 times. Their health is not up to par. Their spec is even more puzzling. The primary reason we take them is because if we don’t, we are effectively paralyzed.

Again, hypothetically speaking.

You understand my beliefs in the matter. A raiding guild that is not raiding is not a raiding guild.

I want to help

I want to do whatever I can to get these players developed and up there in no time. But attacking a healer’s technique, gear, spec, and situational awareness can be a bit disorienting all at the same time. Unfortunately, my guild doesn’t exactly have a lot of time to spend waiting around for them to see the light. So I have to shine a really large bulb in their eyes right now so that changes can be made as quick as possible in order to balance the ship.

Did anyone who read that last paragraph understand what I was trying to say there?

In other words, if I get all nice and touchy-feely I might not get taken seriously enough. If I don’t get taken seriously enough, then they will still continue their mistakes and inefficiencies. If that continues, I will have to eventually turn to look for other solutions and I start right at the beginning going through the processes again.

On the other hand, if I come on too strong, they become defensive and tone deaf to the suggest improvements that I offer. This results in them nodding and of course, not doing as I ask.

Where are all the healers?

I don’t exactly have a whole lot of healers barging down my door begging to apply. I have to work with what I have. Skipping straight from T4 instances to T6 would just about overload anyone.

As my distant cousin Carlos Juan Atticus would say, "you loco, ese".

How can I possibly pack six months worth of raiding skill, information, and knowledge into a two week trial period? Because that’s all the time I have before these guys either sink or swim. We let them go in favour of looking for new ones. There is no readme file on how to be an awesome healer. Compressing information such as positioning, healer smarts, situational awareness, and all these big mumbo jumbo terms is tough.

Which leads me to…

I have to trim down all this fat. I have to tell them what they need to know, what they need to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why they should do it. Don’t ask me why, but people find it reassuring to know why they are doing the things they do. Do you know how amazingly cooperative people get if you give them a perfectly logical reason as to why they should do something?

Example, every time you see a Doomfire, abandon healing your tank and run. Why? Because they’ll die if they don’t. A dead healer is a useless healer.

Never forget my principles.

I want these players to get better so that I don’t have to bring in a new batch of healers to shepherd. 3 hours of my time is spent in the raid. When I handle assignments and briefings on what healers are doing, I do it several trash pulls before. This way, I don’t waste time when we get in front of a new boss and spend 10 minutes explaining exactly what we’re doing, where, when, how, and why.

It’s quite satisfying to hear my raid leaders call out for various things to find them already done.

"We need Shadow Resist buff." "Done." "Did anyone tell the new priest what they’r-" "Done." "By the way, Lang needs a fear war-" "Already up and 10 seconds in." "So the paladin knows who to hea-" "Yeah, main tank, can we pull now?"

I wonder how many man hours I’ve saved.

About me

I am an extremely direct person. If I want something, I’m going to say it. If I see something wrong, I’m going to mention it. My trouble is that I want to convey my thoughts in a manner where I won’t come out as an ass yet can instill a sense of urgency.

Let’s talk about specs.

Let’s hypothetically assume there is a Priest with a 21/40 build (that’s Divine Spirit without the improved, and the Circle of Healing without the Circle of Healing).

Can you tell me what is wrong with that?

A normal person might say nothing. It’s a perfectly decent spec and players should be allowed to spec however they want. Empowered Healing does increase base flash heal and greater heal by a sizeable margin, to be sure.

The healing lead would have alarm bells go off in their heads. Can you tell me why? In a raid, there are 25 players allowed. A certain percentage consist of tanks, DPS, and healers.

This is the argument that I would make and that I would say but I would just feel so guilty of saying (I do have a guilt complex).

"Bob, you know, you’re an excellent healer. You do what you’re told and heal who you’re asked to heal. You’ve been a tremendous service to the Guild. But I’m in a tough bind here. I can only let in 7 healers at a time and you don’t exactly supply a lot of options for yourself. You’re specced Spirit without the Improved Spirit. You also don’t have Circle of Healing. Why should I take you? You’re useless to me. Give me a reason to take you. I want to take you in, I really do. But when I weigh you against the other potential classes, it looks quite grim."

Of course, Bob, the ever so brilliant opportunist would counter with the fact that I don’t have a lot of options to choose from. This brings me back to my opening question. How do you improve players without giving the impression of an arrogant jerk? Because frankly, I am one. But that’s because I care.

I did mention this was all hypothetical, right? This is the kind of material that gets pumped out when a blogger sits idle in a chair with his eyes closed.

Comments

perhaps consider a one one meeting with each of the new “hyopthetical” healers in vent after a trial run or two. Kind of an interim progress report if you will.

As specs go, the 21/40/0 might be quite unothadox in tier 6 content, but as you have pointed out in the past circle of healing has limitied use before tier 5/6 I would bring up the reasons for the spec choice in the one on one vent chat.

Having a chat like this with each new candidate might help out on other things as well. If I am new and doing what I have always done, I won’t change unless it is pointed out that I am not doing as well as I could be.

I mention using vent for the chat because you get much more from tone and inflection than you can with a series of whispers in game.

But hey, thats all just hypothetical. I am not an officer in my current guild, just a grunt =)

You hold a position of authority in a raiding guild, it’s your responsibility to ensure the healers are up to the job, so I don’t think it’s arrogant to have these discussions. But you are in a tricky position if, as you suggest, the healers in question know you need them more than they need you. Maybe you should start some heavy-duty recruitment, just so they get the hint that their spots aren’t guaranteed. Then I think they will be open to fair discussions about how to spec and how to perform. It’s really ok to say to ‘Bob’ how would you feel about moving some talent points around? If you already have one healer with imp divine spirit, any idiot can see you don’t need another for example. It’s tougher if the issue is performance but you only get better with experience, so judge them by how willing they are to listen to feedback and how keen they are to find ways to improve. Reading your blog would be a very good start 😛

In my experience as both a recruiting officer and a class leader, make the priest with the non-ideal spec think that you WANT them in the raids and don’t want to have to recruit someone with the cookie cutter spec who can replace them. My favorite line: “I trust you a lot more with healing ____ than I do Joe Schmoe; but Joe’s got the spec that most ideal for raiding and it’d be favoritism to keep you in without making x change.” or “I’d rather have you around than the newb who applied that we don’t know.” Make sure to use newb, noob, or nub to ensure that the other half feels more loved. Believe me… It works, haha.

“Hey Bob, we were wondering if you could move two points out of (name the best place to take the two points out) and put them into imp ds. It would help the raid. Oh and the guild will pay the respec fee since we’re the ones asking. Is that ok?”

That used to be my technique when I used to boss around the healers pre-bc. State what I want in a complete sentence with no fluff. And add: “Ok?” or “Does that work?” as an afterthought on the next line.

You know, I always found that healers are an easy going bunch and normally are just happy to go along as long as they don’t have to make decisions.

> How do you improve players without giving the impression of an arrogant jerk? Because frankly, I am one.

Frankly, don’t be one. 😉 You seem to have an awareness about things that you do and say that might be construed as arrogant or jerky, so the easy answer is just don’t do and say those things. You can be constructive in your criticism and suggestions and not come off that way. Your choices of advice delivery aren’t limited to either jerk or touchy-feely. There is a whole spectrum in between, and the thing that will permit you to not be jerky is your self-awareness. It’s people that don’t realize they’re being jerkfaces that can’t help it. You can help it. (Whether you want to is something different, but I suspect you do.)

About the how… Sometimes this is tough because how advice is taken has as much to do with who is giving it as with who is taking it. Some people are going to take everything personally no matter what, but in my opinion, the best thing you can do in delivering the advice about a person’s character is don’t make it personal. Make it about the toon. Give specific advice about improving gear, spec, and how they cast their heals based on your analyses of the numbers. Set the bar for improvement and let them know (matter-of-factly, in list form) what their goals should be and how long they have to reach them before you’ll need to replace them so that the raid can progress. Sentiments like “YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re useless to me” should be tossed. You think you’re being direct, but this is disrespectful to the player.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be direct with people. I imagine this is essential to getting things done in a raid. I do believe you can be direct and also be respectful, however. Whether you really respect them or not, treating your fellow players respectfully will make them much more receptive to your advice.

I like Malva’s suggestion as well. That’s a nice way to temper advice, and make the person receiving it feel like they still have some control of the situation.

When you’re trying to make constructive criticism of somebody, always open up with a compliment, and let them know that you’re on their side.

Then, instead of saying what they’re doing wrong, tell them what they could improve, like, “I noticed your holy-disc spec doesn’t include Improved Spirit and Circle of Healing. I know you’re used to Empowered Healing, but you should really give this other stuff a shot, it’ll only make you more useful to the rest of the raid and, as a result, make you look better.”

This way, you’re offering them advice, getting your point across, and phrasing it such that they can’t say, “Well, I’m all you’ve got, don’t hate my style, blah blah blah”.

As far as the other aspects, think about taking them aside in little 30 minute increments and figuring out how to get them used to a raid environment with a little training. Be creative. These aren’t just things you can only teach in raids; there are other ways to teach situational awareness.

i.e., get two mages to aggro an entire gaggle of low-level mobs, and have one healer see how long they can keep both of them topped off simultaneously.

Think in terms of “Rocky”-style training. It’s not the actual fight you’re training them for, it’s the reflexes, responses, and everything else. You’re training them to think about healing in ways they’re not used to, and that’s what you should be focusing on.

Jasmine and Malva both have good ideas similar to what I was going to say. I also definitely think that a vent conversation would be superb – especially if it’s in the light of “hey, so we could go recruit someone else, but we like you (if you like them) and you obviously don’t suck (if they don’t suck) so can we go hang out in the ShootTheBreeze vent channel for a bit? I’ve a few things that I think would make you a better fit for the raid”. Vent has the added benefit of one more level of communication – voice inflection – so you have a little more control over things getting taken the wrong way.

Since they presumably want to raid with you, one of them saying “no thanks, I like myself just how I am now and don’t care what you think/say” doesn’t seem likely. And that attitude isn’t really what you want in a raider.

I think it’s important to be both honest and kind in these situations – if you make it impersonal (hey, so, can i talk to you about such and such talent; vs; hey, so your spec is really lacking) and straightforward, the person should be able to at least listen and accept what you’re saying. If they can’t understand that tier6 content is not tier5 content and that things change as you progress… well, that’s not a good mark for a raider. Adaptability and willingness to change are kind of important.

1. Get 1-2 more recruits, even if you have enough for regular fights you are going to need a little more healing oompph for fights like bloodboil. Also then you can kick one without crippling the guild.

2. Do Trial runs, of T4/T5 content. This way you can hand them advice about changes to their style (even get gear upgrades), and if they fuck up it likely won’t wipe the raid. Also these are bosses they know so you can hand them advice more about playing and less about the boss.

3. Ask if anyone of your tanks/dps will respec as a healer. Don’t force anyone, but bribes and flattery will go a long way. Only ask if you already know they can heal and taking them from their current spot won’t cripple the raid ie the main feral druid or protadin or Spriest.

4. When asking for a respec, first ask why they specced a certain way. Then explain to them why another way would be better. For say CoH, you can say you need him to spec that way for the good of raid.

5. Keep track of their progress with your Raid Leader and GM. That way you can all be in agreement if you need to “let someone go”.

6. It’s good to have advice coming from more than 1 person but not at the same time. You don’t want to bombard the newbies with the same “constructive criticism” from 6 different people. Let your other healers know they are under your wing and you will be giving them advice, and make sure someone else is giving them tips when your not there.

7. Be positive, if they are pre-healing now but not 100% of the time, tell them they improved, but you know they can do better.

Don’t make it personal is the best choice. Instead of saying things like ‘your spec is not that great’, or even talking about their raid spot, say things like “it’s been found by us and the top guilds out there that priests should either have 23/38 (for imp DS) or 1x/41 (for CoH). Imp DS is just too good to pass up and CoH is amazing for healing in T5/T6 levels because of all the raid damage that people take.” Tell them that it’s better to gem in a certain way, and don’t mention their gemming choices directly; mention them as sidenotes. “Spirit in 2.4 is much better and is a really great way to regen mana, especially when you start employing more stopcasting macros and use inner focus. Mp5 is a bit expensive nowadays compared to spirit, and +healing is nice but isn’t as important as mana regen for a long fight – and where we are, the fights are pretty long”.

If you don’t make it about them personally but do make it about being a better priest in general, and you can point out the discussions on it that are not dependent on your opinion, I’ve found they’ll listen a lot more. If they don’t listen…well, you’re kinda hosed. But the people that don’t listen to generic criticism are the ones that aren’t going to change no matter what.

Leadership requires getting people to do what you determine needs to be done. With that said, your approach must match the person you want to do something. Some may need to be handled softly while others can take even the harshest criticisms as ways to improve. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the person you are talking to, which = empathy. Regardless of the tone of delivery though, be clear about your expectations and why you have made your decision. It is ok if they whine a little but if you make it clear that the decision is yours as the leader and the decision has been made they will likely see it is pointless and counter productive to fight the decision.

I’ve been struggling with just the same problem. Now is a terrible time to be recruiting healers (can I borrow one of your recruits–Collateral Damage is only at the end of T5/beginning of T6 so we’re doing less scary stuff–joking of course, unless you have a spare shaman).

I think that making constructive criticisms in game should follow the same guidelines that, say, a teacher would use. Let’s say that I’m teaching freshman composition at a university, and I get a paper that has an overwhelming number of grammar mistakes but also no thesis and no evidence. As the instructor, I can mark all of that in red and give the paper an F. However, that pretty much ends the learning process for a student. What a good professor will do is try to teach one thing at a time.

So I’ll emphasize the thesis statement for paper one and have the student talk to me about that. I’ve identified that as the most important thing.

What’s most important for a new healer? I’d have to say spell rotation first. You can be very very lazy in Karazhan and not use your variety of spells to the fullest. Many healers learned terrible habits in T4 content, me included, and we all had to overcome them. Some people hang on to those habits all through T5. Some of our priests, for example, don’t understand Prayer of Mending and don’t use it often.

I would start at spell rotation and then move on to the next important principle, which is probably situational awareness/movement in T6.

Two weeks is not much time to get someone to be T6 viable, but I would say that if they can improve one aspect of their game, keep them. Or send them to me 🙂

I’m very much like you. As my mother said once, I “don’t suffer fools gladly”.

People who are able to take good advice from a jerk are priceless gems. Their ego doesn’t get in the way of their skill, a rare and valuable trait (one that I usually lack myself).

It can be worth sugar coating the message not to turn people off though. Hubby is main tank/second in charge and he is in favor of sugar coating. Second to that, and if he feels comfortable, he will use gentle ridicule and peer pressure. That, however, takes time.

I would gather some concise resources (guides, forum posts, blogs) that get your points across as well as the direct approach. You are where you are because you’re experienced and responsible, and they should respect that. If they don’t, you’re still going to be looking for healers in two weeks .

I’m with Gius. The approach you take needs to be tailored for the person you’re dealing with. If you say that you don’t have time for that then be prepared to lose recruits (do you have time for that?). At the very least start out very polite, explain stuff, make requests rather then give orders.

Of course some people simply don’t want to change and you need to identify those people quickly.

Morane: I never I didn’t have time to explain boss encounters. I said I don’t have time to explain boss encounters before the boss begins. I launch into a very brief explanation of what we do. Recruits are expected to read up on the bosses that we plan to go through during the raid. Questions and other such things would be asked on the pulls leading to the boss. I don’t like to sit idle. I don’t want my guild to sit idle. I think dulls the senses.

My first thought, the lack of time pretty much gives some bluntness a pass. Set up a session where you can talk privately. Vent would be best for the amount of stuff you can communicate over time. Open with something like “Hey, I know you’re new, but I think you have a shot at being successful at raiding at this level. Unfortunately, I only have about 2 weeks to get you caught up to the rest of the healers here, which means I’m pressed for time, so I’m going to have to be fairly blunt, but please understand that this isn’t personal in any way.”

This lets you be blunt enough to make your point concisely, while letting them know it’s not because you want to be an ass. Then start by talking about what you’ve seen, and where you can see improvements. Start with specs and rotations, as those can be directly coached. Something like “The first thing I noticed is your spec. You’re sitting around 2 major raiding talents for healing priests, but you don’t have either maxed out, which is what raids at this level need. I know getting maxing out one means you can’t get the other at all, but that’s OK, we have other priests with the talent points you’re missing. In order to maximize your usefulness to the raid, we do need you to pick one and max it out.” (Note: I don’t have a priest, so my comments on the exact nature of what talents he has and improved/maxxing out talents, whatever may be off, but I hope you get the idea: pick Improved Spirit or Circle of Healing).

If you already have priests with Improved Spirit, suggest they go Circle of Healing (or vice versa), something like “Now, we have plenty of priests with Improved Spirit, so we don’t need another priest with points in that talent, instead, why don’t you put points into Circle of Healing? As you may have noticed, that’s a very useful spell for us in T6 instances, and this way we can have Circle of Healing in the raid along with Improved Spirit — so everybody’s coming out ahead in the end.”

After you go over specs, go over rotations. “Looking at WWS, I noticed you tend to do . Try this instead, . What happens with this other rotation is .”

End with stuff like situational awareness. You can’t really “teach” this like you can spec and spell rotations, but you can give them ideas of what they should be looking out for. This is where you could share the little things that could be his first sign of when to adjust. Stuff like “To help you know when to move or to switch targets, I like to the tank x seconds before aggro switches, so that when the target does change, I don’t have to worry about my current healing target, as he’s HoTTed up” or “Right before the boss uses , he . If you can watch out for that, the boss timer, and/or raid warnings, you should find that you’ll be able to better anticipate what’s needed, and can actually start being more proactive in your healing (get a HoT up before the target takes their first hit, etc.)”

This is blunt (where you’ll be able to communicate most effectively as that suits your style best), gives peoel the knowledge they need to feel comfortable taking your advice, establishes trust in what you’re saying (your reasons indicate that you know what you’re talking about), without making you out to be an ass (you don’t have much time to train them up, but this is all stuff that can be done over a few weeks, and isn’t that difficult).

As you close your conversations, offer to follow up between raids via forums, Vent, whatever, so that way you can not only track their progress, but there’s ample opportunity to give them more in-depth advice as they get the basics down.

Another idea is to have frequent talks with whomever you are leading, especially when they do a good job at something. You don’t want to have your conversation only after something isn’t going well because then everyone will dread talking to you, kinda like when the teacher pulled you out in the hall when you were in trouble.

People will handle critiques better if they hear both the positives and negatives on a frequent basis.

I know raids always end with everyone being tired and wanting to log off but a debriefing on what went well and what can be improved after every raid seems like a good part of a successful raiding guild’s routine.

“Of course, Bob, the ever so brilliant opportunist would counter with the fact that I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t have a lot of options to choose from. This brings me back to my opening question. How do you improve players without giving the impression of an arrogant jerk? Because frankly, I am one. But thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s because I care. ”

Bob the brilliant opportunist is a jerk, and action begets treatment; choosing to not take leaders seriously for spiteful reasons (well, whats he going to do? fire me?) is tasteless and annoying.

Take for instance, having a healer walk out on you at what seems like a drop of a hat; I don’t think that healer should expect to either be welcomed back with open arms nor should they necessarily be given any special treatment regardless, but its up to them to show their quality.

The best thing to do matt is to be real with people and if they can’t deal with you being real with them then they aren’t worth your time. Personaly, I hate fake people and i’d rather someone told me I fucked up, because I can take the criticism, than let the mistake continue.

We usually do that on the forums, typically the next day when we’re rested. We have threads on all our current progression kill targets, and we analyze the fights there and what worked and what didn’t the day after.

Matt, I was referring to the paragraph where you say “Unfortunately, my guild doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t exactly have a lot of time to spend waiting around for them to see the light. So I have to shine a really large bulb in their eyes right now so that changes can be made as quick as possible in order to balance the ship.”

I didn’t mean to imply that you should be taking time out during an instance run to coach. Rather
that you need may need to take some time away from the raiding schedule to coach new recruits.

Incidently, one truism I’ve always try to apply IRL, whether with my kids, coaching soccer or at work is :

Praise in Public, Criticize in Private.

Though I have seen, and participated in, teams that held a regular no-holds barred fault-finding meeting. That’s definitely for highly motivated groups who know how to take and give criticism.

If CoH isn’t needed for the targeted encounters, and another priest in the raid has IDS, there is no issue with a 21/40 spec.

As always skill > gear > spec.

If you really need to teach someone how to heal from the ground up, start with what spells to cast (Gheal instead of Fheal). No practice needed here, just mash/bind different buttons.

Micromanagment, your blue bar (+restorative cooldowns) and cast bar vs. everyone’s green bars. I say everyone’s because coddling people into a single target healing/fixed assignment mindset is setting them up for failure. Running Karazhan with 2 healers and undergeared (low DPS, low mitigation, but not stupid) alts is a good place to learn this.

Anticipation. Know what will happen before it does. Go back to preBC and PUG MC over a dial-up connection. If that doesnt teach anticipation, nothing can.

OH SHIT moments. How do you keep yourself and as many people as you can alive at a time like this? Learn by doing, go PVP with a PVE gear/spec. If you’re opposed to that, just torture yourself with a heroic in greens PUG.

That pretty much covers the basics, if they need to know more than that, there’s likely no hope

I’ve made the switch from Tank to Melee DPS to Ranged dps to Healing. I love healing. However, I would love to see a blog on your thoughts on why there is such a healer shortage. Let alone a “good” healer shortage.

(Semi-offtopic but kinda relevant as the whole post is based on the current healer shortage a lot of realms are experiencing.

ok first hand experience here, when I came into the guild that I am now in I was beyond totally green in 25 mans, had done kara a handfull of times and was literally not even in a full set of professor plums. Our healing core leader then was great, he linked me meters even on trash pulls and asked what was wrong, and made me figure out where my spec was lacking, and as for being a dead healer isn’t being a healer at all, well the officer’s note was set to put a one in my note every time I died in a raid, after that number reached a set amount for the entire week I was benched, yea it was a pain in the ass on some pulls where pmc didn’t back me with enough stam to survive but ya know what, I never have died early on archie, I barely ever die anymore on raids and there is a feeling of accomplishment when the ss’s are being distributed and I am not given one automatically. Its a learning process, and right now your recruits are on a very steep curve unfortunally, I would hold a meeting of the healers though and just say in plain and simple words step up and come prepared or *insert threat here ranging from stupid dkp, to being benched*

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About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a former guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on Blizzard Watch. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. My current guild is on Kel'Thuzad US.